Texas Chill... Still Not Done With Winter?

One of the more impressive features on the weather map is the strong front heading into Southeast Texas as I type this. I touched on this the other day, and showed one model which was predicting temperatures would stay in the 40s Saturday afternoon. This type of chill is becoming reality, and in fact it isn't out of the question that most of tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday is spent in the 40s. To many, this doesn't sound like a big deal, but down here, where normal highs are in the 70s, it is pretty wild, and may in fact break the daily records on Friday and Saturday for the coldest high temperature on that date. Oh and I haven't mentioned the cold rain to go with it. I'm hoping we can at least salvage a drier Saturday night into Sunday, but we'll see. Definitely looks mega-dreary tomorrow through at least Saturday afternoon down here, though to be fair, the rain is badly needed across Texas. Here is a current map (won't be current when many of you see this of course), which still shows some warm air in Houston, but not for long, as the chill cometh!

Next topic... Still unable to say the books are closed on winter. It remains a possibility that some wet snowflakes fly with that southern stream energy in the Lower Apps / Mid Atlantic (down into VA) Friday morning, though shouldn't amount to much with marginal temperatures. Only the mountains are fair game really for a small accumulation I would think, but something to watch. And then there is next week, as the European model wants to bring one final dumping into the East around the middle of next week, with a very amplified pattern, which I have shown below. Is this possible? Well, sure it has a chance, but the Euro model seems to be an outlier right now with this kind of amplification, so I wouldn't hold my breath on this, not that most people would do this anyway given it is the middle of March, but stranger things have happened! Really the same key would apply as has been the rule all winter... getting a slower / more amplified northern stream, and frankly, with AAM not jerking strongly in one direction or the other as of this writing, it is a tough call a week away. We got it to work out once... We'll see if luck can strike twice. Stay tuned!